


love in my blood and you on my brain

by pummelwhack



Category: Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
Genre: F/F, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-18
Updated: 2013-09-18
Packaged: 2017-12-26 22:38:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/971119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pummelwhack/pseuds/pummelwhack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Tetra thinks about kissing Medli, and one time she stops thinking about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	love in my blood and you on my brain

**Author's Note:**

> LADY PIRATES WOOING BIRD PEOPLE DESCENDED FROM FISH PEOPLE. What part of that sentence isn't awesome?
> 
> Title taken from a King Charles song.

**1**

The first time Tetra thinks about kissing her, the wind is blowing northeast. Tetra knows, because it carries her ship here, after yet another attempt to infiltrate Fire Mountain results in burns too severe to ignore.

The girl's name is Medli and she meets them ashore, having seen their approach from one of many lookout points. Dragon Roost Island is near impossible to infiltrate; the guardian Valoo sees all ships within ten nautical miles of his perch, and by the time one scales the cliffside in any direction to reach the indigenous dwellings, their police are ready and waiting.

Sea folk spin tales of a great treasure passed down through the island's royal family—an ancient pearl worth several fortunes to the right collector. Tetra knows the current Prince Komali is but a boy, and could easily be overpowered by any member of her crew.

But only a fool would attempt such a heist.

Thus, Tetra takes great care to steer clear of this island. Fearlessness is no synonym for _stupidity_. 

But Fire Mountain's flames are no ordinary flames, and the pain will not ease, and Tetra is beside herself with agony when she orders the anchor be dropped within swimming distance of the island's coast, certain she'll be turned away but too desperate not to try.

Medli wears the dress of a servant, a golden lyre strapped to her spine like a pack. Long red hair is tied back to fashion a tail, animated by wind, and her eyes, a darker red, are swollen with worry.

"You shouldn't have swam ashore," she says, taking Tetra by the elbow. "I saw you get burned. Sea water makes it worse."

"You're tellin' me," Tetra grinds out. "You know I'm a—"

"Pirate? I do. The flags on your ship are fairly well-known."

Tetra feels a flutter of pride in her chest, overwhelming the pain in her palms for a moment.

"But you've never brought harm to me or my kind, so come with me. There's fresh water in the mountain to soothe your burns."

Tetra cannot climb in this condition, so Medli lets Tetra mount her back and flies, with some struggle, through the mountain's interior where several Rito eyeball the pair of them before returning to their tasks.

Medli brings her to what looks like a hot spring. Tetra unwinds her arms from Medli's neck, without warning, and slides right in; the water is warm, nearly to the point of discomfort, but not the slightest bit salty. 

"This spring is fed by groundwater," Medli explains, perching on the nearest ledge, after Tetra breaches the surface. "Before the flood, this mountain was an active volcano. It's dormant now, but there's molten lava deep within the cavern. Streams of freshwater beneath the ocean get boiled and forced through this well. That's why it's so warm. But it's nourishing when it cools."

"Damn," says Tetra.

"What?" Medli asks, suddenly concerned.

"Nothing. Just. You're smart. Real smart. It's kind of hot." Tetra smirks. "No pun intended."

"Oh," Medli says, feathers ruffling, and ducks her face out of sight. Tetra continues smirking, if only because it's her default expression. "Well, you can stay as long as you need. I spoke with Valoo just before your arrival. He's not bothered by your presence."

"Yeah? And what of you?" Tetra swims a little closer. "You're not bothered, either. I think you're even a little bit curious. Tell me: why are you helping a no good stinkin' pirate like me?"

Medli tilts her head, somewhat indulgently, and the subsequent curl of her lips forms a lop-sided smile that Tetra wants, needs, _aches_ to press her mouth against. She stares—can't not stare, can't even _think_ , until Medli's reply snaps Tetra out of her lust: "You're not as scary as I thought you'd be."

"Yes I am! You take that back!"

Medli's resultant laughter has warmth blooming in Tetra's belly, hotter still than the boiled water she's simmering in.

She smiles in spite of herself—a smile, not a smirk.

  
  


**2**

The second time Tetra thinks about kissing her, it's not an accident that brings her ship to port in familiar waters. Meticulous plotting has secured her return to Dragon Roost and when the crew wonders how they managed to catch a current back in the direction from which they came, Tetra shrugs and blames Zephos before claiming important business and forbidding them all from leaving the ship.

"You're burns healed _perfectly_." Medli's preening, turning Tetra's hands over and over in her own delicate palms. Tetra puts up no resistance, going limp in Medli's touch, quite enjoying the attention and being rather obvious about it. "I don't see a single scar."

"All thanks to you," Tetra reminds her, and smirks when Medli ducks her face with that feather-ruffled shyness Tetra finds so charming.

Tetra finds a lot of things about Medli charming. It's why she came back, why she spent the past two weeks devising a course to bring them past here, why she wasted away each night tossing around in her bed, yearning and remembering and wondering what it would be like to wrap her arms around Medli once more, to press other parts of their bodies together—wondering if her beak makes an obstacle for kissing, wanting to discover ways around it, wanting to see how far beneath her clothes those feathers truly ruffle.

But all of her fantasies are nothing compared to that damned smile—the lop-sided one, the oh-god-I-need-to-kiss-her smile she's smiling right now and Tetra goes positively weak in the knees at the sight of it.

"I was going to play some music for Valoo," Medli says, pulling Tetra out of her swooning. "Would you like to listen?"

" _Hell_ yeah."

The slang makes Medli giggle, which makes Tetra smile—not smirk; _smile_ —and then she's beckoning for Tetra to mount her like last time and Tetra is all too happy to comply.

The mountain's height takes her by surprise. Tetra's not sure why, because Dragon Roost Island is one of if not the tallest landmark within the Great Sea, but—holy Helmaroc King.

Those are clouds.

Those are clouds and they are _flying through them_ and Tetra squeals a little—she's never flown through a fucking _cloud_ before; she's never flown period, before she met Medli—and tightens her arms around Medli's neck, feeling her stomach drop out and waiting for the rest of her body to join it.

Medli lands carefully on a ledge so high above the clouds, Tetra can't even see the ocean anymore. Not that she's looking. She's kind of busy clinging to Medli for dear life.

"Tetra, honey," Medli says, soft and patient, touching the arms encircling her neck with gentle encouragement. "You can let go now."

Tetra does, too quickly—startling herself, but Medli spins around just as quickly and slides their palms together, anchoring her, and Tetra takes comfort from that metaphor.

"Okay?" Medli says, eyes big as the moon on nights when sunken treasure lights up the sea like fireflies in Forest Haven. (Tetra takes comfort from that metaphor, too.)

"Yeah."

Medli's smile is bright, stirring embers, and with a grandiose wave of her arm she draws Tetra's attention to the _giant fucking dragon_ not twenty feet from where they stand. "This is Valoo, the Sky Spirit. Valoo, this is Tetra."

Valoo makes a series of unintelligible thundering sounds.

"Um," says Tetra.

"He says hello," Medli tells her, giggling a bit, "and he welcomes you, as a time-honored kindred spirit. I'm not sure what he means by that."

Tetra continues to stare.

"Let's sit," Medli continues, pointing to a short, winding staircase.

They share a step, and both Tetra and Valoo go silent as Medli's deft fingers pluck melodies Tetra's never heard before, melodies that feel familiar and melodies that don't. The sound is breathtaking, swallowing them up like the clouds; even Valoo's eyes close in rapture, enjoying every note.

Tetra leans against Medli's shoulder and thinks that this is so much better than any of her fantasies.

  
  


**3**

The third time Tetra thinks about kissing her, it's Medli's arms wound tight around _her_ neck.

They're ambushed by territorial pirates on the outskirts of Six-Eye Reef, a misfired cannon ripping straight through their sail. The stitching gives way to powerful gusts of wind from an oncoming storm, entirely useless now. They're sitting ducks, flanked and outnumbered, but they sink their enemies. Then the storm strikes, the Great Sea raging against their hull, and they can do nothing but wait for ruthless waves to wash them ashore.

Where they land is nothing less than a stroke of luck.

The storm changes direction here, missing the island completely. The sky is bright, a brilliant blue, and warm with mid-morning sun. Medli meets them on the beach and greets Tetra like an old friend.

"How wonderful to see you!"

Tetra clucks her tongue, just once in Medli's ear, hands lingering on the twin peaks of her hips where bone juts out. "Words scarcely spoken to a pirate."

"The scary ones, maybe."

"Stop saying that! I'm terrifying!"

Medli laughs, delighted and carefree and faintly musical. The sound makes something warm churn low in Tetra's belly—a familiar dynamic. Once again, Medli offers her backside for flight. It goes without say that the boys are to remain on the ship.

It takes two days of correspondence via Rito postmen to find a traveling merchant with a suitable sail, and another day to negotiate price. It costs Tetra a pretty silver rupee, delivery fees notwithstanding, but it's worth an excuse to spend three days exploring the mountain with Medli.

"I can't believe you've never ventured this far. Don't you get curious?"

"No!" Medli's fighting to be heard over the roar and hiss of steam, of volcanic activity inside a mountain claimed dormant for centuries. "Valoo swears there's nothing in this cavern but monsters and molten lava!"

"Sounds like a party to me!" Tetra's boisterous laughter is met with another sizzling tower of steam surging nearby. Medli squeals, and the bridge gives a rickety shake, inciting more squealing. Tetra turns to offer reassurance and is promptly tackled into a hug that trembles with fear.

"Hey... " Something softens in Tetra, something tender and elusive. Something that aches to comfort Medli with kisses. She settles a hand on Medli's back, between her shoulders where feathers emerge, and presses her nose to Medli's ear. "Let me return the favor, yeah? I won't let you fall. Do you trust me?"

Medli nods against Tetra's shoulder, not missing a beat.

"That's my girl," Tetra says, mouth beaming. When Medli looks at her again, the smile she wears is brave.

They cross the bridge, take the door, nearly walk off a cliff, and find another bridge. Medli's hand stays locked in Tetra's but she moves with confidence. Tetra slays any keese that bother them, and never misses the impressed and maybe even slightly aroused look Medli gives whenever Tetra handles her blade. Her skill is deft, fluid. Unmatched. Much like Medli and her lyre.

They discover a treasure chest so large it matches both their heights. Their reward, the pot of gold at the end of this grand adventure, is one sparkling skull pendant. More than enough to make up for the cost of the sail.

Medli insists Tetra keep it, on the grounds that rupees are useless to her. As an attendant to the Sky Spirit she wants for nothing; her greatest treasure is her lyre. The value of the pendant is better spent on Tetra's ship, which—Medli knows—is Tetra's greatest treasure.

In the end, Tetra never sells the pendant. She keeps it beneath her pillow and fingers it at night and remembers the feeling of Medli's embrace and the way she smiled when Tetra called her _my girl_ with such perfect clarity it makes her clench with longing deep down in her core.

  
  


**4**

The fourth time Tetra thinks about kissing her, a successful raid of the watchtowers near Rock Spire Isles leaves Tetra flushed with treasure. Her real prize, though, is what she swashbuckles from a territorial kargorok, trading for a pair of claw marks on her sword-wielding arm that burn when blasted with salty sea breeze.

She wears them with pride, refusing a bandage.

"I hear Rito chicks go crazy for those things," Niko says, giving Tetra a shrewd grin and an elbow in the ribs.

Tetra winks in return, tucking the shimmering, sunny gold feather into the scarf tied round her hips. "Back below the decks, swabbie."

They sneak up on Dragon Roost from the west, anchoring far enough from shore that Tetra opts to row the remaining distance, fearing for the feather if she swims.

She scales the mountain with nimble feet, creeping up behind Medli on the landing pad, and it's worth the trouble—the way Medli's face alights with excited surprise: a smile so joyously dazzling, so warm and inviting Tetra thinks she can swim in it, can dive right in.

"I've thought about you so much since our last adventure," Medli confesses, earnest and eager as though wondering what thrills Tetra's brought with her today.

Tetra smirks, because she's definitely thought about Medli, and produces the feather without pretense.

"You—" And here, Medli's face does something Tetra's never seen: every line, every feathered contour goes quiet; the smile diffuses, setting with an astonished sort of clarity like realizing she can have something previously thought unattainable.

 _This is it_ , Tetra thinks. _I should kiss her_.

Then Medli's eyes find the claw marks and it shatters—the moment, the opportunity; the feathers around her neck ruffle with a flare of anger.

"The kargorok did this!" And the feather is forgotten in favor of fussing over Tetra's wound and the reckless risk she took in challenging such a temperamental beast, which leads to a recount of the entire raid that keeps Medli's eyes lit for hours.

  
  


**5**

The fifth time Tetra thinks about kissing her, only Gonzo's bandana stops Tetra from bleeding to death.

Like always, Medli meets them at the beach. And the face she pulls upon seeing Tetra's hand pressed to her wound, Tetra's blood spilt on the sand, Tetra's body crumpled over in pain—is something she instantly forgets, because she never wants to revisit this.

"We stormed a submarine," Tetra explains, wincing with effort. Zuko's got an arm slung round her waist, supporting her in ways she can't help but resent. "Got more than we expected. Bokoblins we can handle, no problem. But moblins... And there were _six_." Tetra pushes Zuko away, stubbornly, takes a step, stumbles, and trips—into Medli's arms. Medli's sharp intake of breath becomes a sob, sudden and startling, and Tetra wants to forget this, too.

"Let me take you to Valoo," says Medli, a little shrill, a little unlike herself. Through sheer force of will, Tetra forces a vertical posture and finds a tide in Medli's eyes threatening to spill over.

She smirks against the odds. "You know I'd let you take me anywhere, but I'm not flight-worthy like this."

"I'll never let you fall. Do you trust me?"

An echo of their last adventure. Tetra answers without pause: "With my life."

Medli flies quickly, carving a path through the clouds, Tetra clinging to her shoulders with all the strength she has left. The wind yields through sheer force of will, like a boat cutting through the deepest waves on days when even the Great Sea lacks Tetra's unsparing determination.

Valoo and Medli speak briefly, in that secret tongue of theirs. When they're finished, Medli looks less like she's about to cry at an given moment.

"There's hope," she says, desperate to believe in it. "A fairy fountain, southwest of here. They'll heal any ailment, restore you to the peak of your health, but—"

"They won't appear for just anyone," Tetra supplies, because sea folk trade legends of this, as well.

Valoo lets loose a mighty roar succeeded by several imploring gargles.

Shrugging the lyre off her shoulders, Medli translates: "In ancient Hyrule there was a sacred song, taught only to members of the Royal Family. The Hero of Time learned to play this song, and by doing so, earned the trust of the Great Fairies, who bequeathed great gifts of magic from the Goddesses themselves."

Tetra opens her mouth, the question they're both wondering on the tip of her tongue, but Valoo—

Begins to sing.

Something clicks in Tetra's mind—a long forgotten memory pushing forth into consciousness; in spite of her agony, in spite of its urgency, Tetra nicks the lyre from Medli's learning fingers and intuitively mimics the tune.

"How do you—" Medli starts, but words fail. The song enchants, a melancholy rapture both time-worn and timeless, striking Tetra as something she shouldn't, _couldn't_ know, yet couldn't not. Like it's been with her a lifetime.

Or lifetimes.

It's over quickly, though—reality snapping back into focus and Tetra doesn't know when she lost track of it, when threads of her surroundings crumbled away or why she felt, with confusing clarity, like she was sitting on the lap of a woman unknown yet also known to her, or why the song no longer transpired from Valoo's mighty throat, but from a small, whistling wind instrument she can't identify but knows, inexplicably, that if it rested in her hands, she could play it just as well.

Her injury throbs a reminder, screaming beneath its bandage—soaking red through red and leaving darker shades in its wake. The lyre falls from her fingers, her knees fall from beneath her, and Medli catches both before either hits the ground.

'What—" Tetra gasps, "—the _hell_ was that?"

"You went somewhere, just now. I mean, in spirit. I felt it. You—" Medli gasps when Tetra looks at her, feathered arm muscles flexing in surprise around Tetra's waist. "Your eyes. Tetra, they're—"

"What?" Medli can't answer, can only stare; it fills Tetra with a horrible sense of dread. "What's wrong with my eyes?"

Medli's words are but a whisper, scarcely brave enough for sound. "Tetra... They're red."

Tetra blinks—once, twice, as though to ward the foreign color away.

"Oh—" Another gasp. "They're blue again." Then Medli's eyes swell with something akin to panic tinged with a curious quality, like she's scared of what she saw though she doesn't understand it. "You played my lyre perfectly."

"I don't—oh, octorok balls. I don't know how to play the lyre!"

"You just did!"

"I mean—the song! I've forgotten it! I can't—"

"I can." Tetra presses the flat of her palm against the wound, trying to staunch it, trying to stall the woozy exhaustion blurring her thought and her senses. "You're going to be okay—hey." Medli hooks a finger beneath her chin, drawing their eyes together, and the distance is so short—she could do it. She could kiss her. "I'm going to get you to the fountain, even if I have to fly you there myself."

Tetra's eyes sting with watery distress even as she smirks, says: "My ship might be faster."

Medli laughs through her own nervous tears. "Faster would be better."

Valoo unbridles a startling bellow and Tetra need not speak an ancient tongue to know he's beseeching them to _hurry_.

With some stubborn reluctance, Tetra surrenders authority to Gonzo, and entrusts the very difficult task of sailing one figurative square southwest to her fussing, fumbling crew so she can lay in bed and prolong bleeding to death.

It would be worse if not for Medli, bent over the bed, watching Tetra fight sleep. She pillows her head on Tetra's hip, the one not soaked in blood, and strokes the back of Tetra's hand over and over and over: keeping her anchored.

"I wish you'd come see me more often," she says, barely louder than a whisper.

Tetra raises a brow—all the effort she can spare.

"I mean—not like this, of course. After we save you. I miss you when you're gone."

Tetra tries to smile but suspects she fails at that; instead, she frees her hand and cards it through Medli's hair, upstaging her ponytail. Medli's eyes soften and glisten with something that makes Tetra forget—for just a moment—that she's dying.

"I think of you when I'm at sea," Tetra confesses, because if this is her last chance to be honest then she's going to be it—no subterfuge, no secrets. "I lay here in this bed and I think about you and remember our adventures together."

A smile bursts through Medli's face. "I do that, too. And I think about—"

But Tetra never hears the end of that sentence, because her world goes black.

  
  


**6**

The sixth time Tetra thinks about kissing her, she finally fucking does it.

She's alive and not dead and bathed in sparkling light and cradled in the protective curve of Medli's arms. The beat of her heart is fast and strong as she pitches forward and bruises her mouth against Medli's, dodging her beak, and maybe it's the magic, maybe it's the thrill of second chances but later when Tetra pins Medli to her bed and kisses her sore she'll tell her about the first five times she wanted to do that.


End file.
